that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried
It has been a year since he has found his way back to her dreamscape.
Perhaps longer.
It’s not that he has not dreamed—he has, he has—but no matter how hard he try, he has not been able to find that wondrous world again. Instead, he had remained trapped beneath the currents of nightmares. The inky black of them pulling him into the undertow, dragging him by the heel into the brackish waters. He slept in the day, usually exhausted from the night, plagued by the sun that finds him no matter where he goes. He wakes fitfully and never fully rested and always dreading the nights that come.
They have not gotten easier with time.
Even knowing more of what has happened to him, in theories at least, has not softened the blow. He has, instead, withdrawn further. He avoids his parents and the pack they live amongst. He does not seek out the shifter who had offered to run with him. He keeps to himself, engaging in conversation only when it is simple and convenient. The conversations are light then. The relationships meaningless. He can flirt and seduce and pretend that he is just a young man with nothing to worry about outside of such interactions.
And, in some ways, it works.
He loses himself in the day and then runs until the moon traps him once more.
He wakes with ash that nothing can chase from his tongue.
Except when he falls asleep this day, there is something different. He recognizes it instantly. The way that the sleeping comes with gossamer and silk instead of the usual hoarse cries. Relief, he thinks. A tsunami wave of it that crashes over him, intense enough that it nearly buckles his knees in this dream world.
“Iridian?” he calls out, softly.
Something flutters against his chest.
Something foreign.
Something dangerously like hope.
so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried
